The present invention relates to lamp shade holders for supporting a lamp shade on a lamp socket.
Lamps come in a wide variety of different sizes and shapes. Ever since the advent of lamp shades to shield the eyes from the harsh glow of a lamp and diffuse the light, there has existed the need for a device to secure the lamp shade around the lamp.
A great variety of lamp shade holders have been developed. Some holders are secured directly to the lamp. This presents the awkward necessity of having to remove the lamp shade and holder to replace a burned-out lamp. Other lamp shade holders are secured to the lamp socket facilitating the changing of a burned-out lamp. However, since lamps, and hence lamp sockets, vary greatly in size and shape, a lamp shade holder designed for a specific lamp or lamp socket is limited in use to lamps and sockets of that particular size. For example, there is a significant difference in size between the standard Edison lamp and socket and the candelabra-type lamp and socket. A lamp shade holder designed for an Edison socket would be useless with a candelabra-type socket and vice versa.
There have been attempts to design lamp shade holders which are adaptable to a variety of lamps and lamp sockets. Thus, various adjustable collars and adapters have been designed to render a lamp shade and holder usable with lamps and lamp sockets having different sizes. These collars and adapters are cumbersome and awkward, due to the necessity for manual adjustment and extra parts, which are often lost or misplaced.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a lamp shade holder which permitted use of a lamp shade with a number of different size lamps and sockets, yet which did not require extraneous adapters or manual mechanical adjustment.